


The Soft Rush of Black Static

by Monstrosibee



Series: Ultramarine and Nickel-Plated [1]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: M/M, and their separation chapter was Very Romantic Tragedy, based on the fact bluestreak survived in covenant of primus, its a gay reunion what do you want
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-10-15 04:16:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17521835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Monstrosibee/pseuds/Monstrosibee
Summary: Prowl doesn't know a lot of bots on this newly salvaged Cybertron, and he definitely doesn't know the bot intruding on his construction site.





	The Soft Rush of Black Static

**Author's Note:**

> look ive never actually read the covenant of primus in full but i did read the bluestreak prowl separation chapter last night and it was VERY emotional and i needed the catharsis of a reunion scene

"Acquistioner Prowl, I told you three times, we can't work with a forty-sixty durallium alloy, we need a thirty-seventy or we won't be able to get the right shape for the columns!" The Constructicon was tall enough that Prowl had to cock his head back to look him in the eyes. Looming like a green and purple brick wall, Mixmaster crossed his arms across his chassis as he came to a stop at the bottom of the nearby construction site's scaffolding. The kibble of his cement spigots gleamed on his boxy helm like another pair of eyes, and Prowl had to fight to keep his gaze on the Decepticon's actual optics.

Turning his body so he completely faced Mixmaster, the newly appointed acquisitioner frowned at his datapad, then squinted back up at him through his yellow visor. "Mixmaster, I told you already, we're not using the old specs for the Iaconian archives, we don't have the resources to build those kinds of intricate artistry yet."

The Constructicon vented through his fans in a way that could almost be described as disdainful, like Prowl had somehow just insulted an artist. "I know you fancy desk jockeys think we're just a couple of dumb grunts through metal and concrete around out here, but we have our professional pride you know."

Prowl flicked a door in irritation. "You do realize I was a spacebridge technician before Bulkhead asked me to fill the acquisitioner position, right?" He shook his head, not giving Mixmaster a chance to answer. "It doesn't matter. The archives are just temporary, I promise. You Constructicons are essentially fifty percent of our skilled artisan work force right now, so we need you building in quantity, not quality unfortunately.

Being called a 'skilled artisan' seemed to have a mollifying effect on Mixmaster, because the hulking bot hesitated before nodding, though his tires spun along his forearms. "No, I guess you're right. Scavenger ain't gonna be happy about it though. He already drew up a way to put some of the old ruins to use in the decorations."

Prowl waved a hand, looking back at his datapad and the materials report that was scrolling across it. "If he gives you too much trouble, send him to Bulkhead. He listens to Bulkhead better than you or I."

As Mixmaster wandered back off towards where his fellows worked, Prowl finally allowed his plating to settle flat again. Mixmaster was a fairly nice guy, if rough around the edges, but Prowl had never talked to him in any manner outside of occasional firefights that had possibly included both him and the Constructicons, and despite what Ironhide said, a firefight was not a conversation. He was not comfortable interacting with someone he knew so little about.

He reread the list and replied to the sender, then glanced up at the construction site. Background chatter filled the air of the half built Iaconian archives despite how few bots were actually working in the area, a harsh buzz of unintelligible shouted requests and burbling laughter. The ache building in the back of his processor only worsened as one of the Constructicons started bolting an enormous cross beam into place above the hall foundation. 

Scrap and slag, Prowl was tired of this. The noise and the constant answering of questions asked by people he knew only by face was wearing on him almost as much as the perpetual tension of an unfought battle did. Prowl couldn't have said no when Bulkhead asked him to help out with resource designation; the big wrecker may have been an incredible industrial engineer, but Prowl had seen the reports he'd sent in during the war, and he was not about to let Bulkhead fail because he had a little trouble keep paperwork organized.

He scowled down at the pad again, not actually looking at it. His soft spark had gotten him stuck in a less than comfortable job, no matter how he wanted to help, unfortunately. Most of the bots he knew were off exterminating old Insecticon hives or embroiled in political reconstruction, and the last time he'd tried to be friendly with one of the other Constructicons, he'd made a fool of himself by confusing two kinds of historical architecture. 

Nearby, an alarm shrieked into the open air, signaling break time for the construction site. The conversations quieted for a moment, then bloomed to life with even more intensity than before as bots clambered down off scaffolding. One or two of them waved at Prowl and he replied in kind, but they quickly returned to their conversations as the crowd bunched up around the fuel tent.

Watching for a moment, he hummed softly to himself and tucked the datapad away in his subspace before shuffling through the contents of the container to pull out a flask of energon. While the fuel tent was nice, something about pushing through the bustle of so many bots always threw Prowl's systems into high alert and overloaded his sensors in the worst of ways. During this break for the past several weeks, he would slink off to somewhere in the site to snatch a moment of silence and clarity in open air. 

Gravel and debris crunched under his feet as he picked across abandoned girders and half built walls to his current favorite spot in the back corner. The only online computer in the archives towered there, ancient and out of date, filled with knowledge that Cybertronians hadn't had access to in millions of years and still didn't for the most part. He'd been working on breaking passcodes aged older than him, hoping to see years of history and culture that had been thought to be lost to their people by years of conflict and war...

And there was someone already there. A bot stood at the terminal as Prowl turned the corner, back to the acquisitioner with hands flying over the keys with the speed of someone who knew they were not supposed to be there. Doors hitched on the stranger's shoulders, a blue paintjob so chalky and poorly maintained it looked gray, gleaming with dust and pockmarks in the spotty light of the half built hall.

Prowl's first instinct had his hand flying to his hip where his blaster no longer hung; in retrospect, the blaster's absence would be a good thing, but in the moment he was incredibly irritated to remember that he wasn't supposed to shoot on sight anymore. 

Instead, he took on what he considered to be an authoritative stance, with his arms crossed and his doors cocked high, and said, "Excuse me, this area is off limits to anyone without a construction software ID. Is there something I can help you with?" He punctuated the question with a growl of his engine, though he knew the illusion of size and power would be broken as soon as the intruder turned and saw the speaker.

To Prowl's surprise, however, the intruder didn't turn. Instead, the bobbing doors froze as the intruder stiffened, and then suddenly the bot was whipping a data slug out of the terminal and shooting off in the opposite direction. It took Prowl several seconds to respond with anything other than startled swearing, and then he scrambled into a run, almost slipping as he vaulted over a nearby unfinished wall. He didn't know what the bot had on the data slug, but he didn't want to take the chance that it was sensitive material or a virus of some sort.

The intruder was surprisingly nimble for someone their size, ducking past exposed wires hanging over head and hurtling over obstacles like a stray streak of light. Being several inches shorter, Prowl struggled to keep them in sight, his knee pistons complaining at him as he bolted up a half finished set of stairs and then jumping down to land hard on flat feet. If he caught this guy, he was definitely going to look into some new knee struts before he did this again.

Several swears flitted past his lips as he heard the chaotic chimes of one of the only finished windows shattering and the heavy chunk of T-cog teeth catching. Not only was this chase about to get a lot faster, but Camien glass was expensive and hard to make, which meant after this he was also going to have to deal with some less than pleased Constructicons. His own T-cog sputtered to life in his chest as he practically dove through the gap in the glass, and he reminded himself never to do that again as he landed so heavily on his wheels that he almost busted his suspension.

Ahead of him, the stranger had gotten a decent head start, but Prowl's engine snarled as he shot up a nearby ramp to cut past the corner that they had had to go around. Like lightning, the stranger shot past his front bumper just as he nearly caught up, almost clipping his headlights and throwing dust and debris into his engine. 

Revving, Prowl wove his way around several low lying walls through the site as the stranger took hairpin turns to shake him from their dented rear bumper. From the screech of their tires, he could tell the stranger hadn't seen a medic in a while, and ducking in and out of rocky pothole filled roads were not going to do anything for the already bald treads. Both of them took the corner around to the front of the building so fast they fish tailed, but Prowl found purchase and gained several feet on the stranger as they sped towards the fuel tent. 

Bonecrusher saw the pursuit heading towards them first, standing by the edge of the tent with a half drunk cube of energon in hand. Prowl saw him smack Long Haul on the back of the head and point at him and his quarry, and he flicked his lights and siren on, trying to get those now clustering at the edge of the tent to stop the stranger. Instead, Scavenger whistled excitedly and clapped his hands, and Bonecrusher laughed and shouted, "Get 'im, Prowl! Never thought I'd see you chasing tail on the job, but good for you!"

At the sound of Prowl's name, the stranger stopped so suddenly in front of him that his bumper slammed straight into their rear fender. The impact was enough to pepper his HUD with static, and instinctually he unfolded into root mode. Several of his systems went into a safety reboot, including his vision and hearing, and all he could feel was the sudden warmth of someone pulling his painful spinning head onto their lap. Nimble fingers pulled his visor open to look at exposed optic sensors, then closed it again, and his hearing came back before his vision did.

"...and no, I didn't realize it was him until you said his name!" The voice shouting was familiar, but Prowl's processor still felt too much like road kill to decipher the tones. "I figured he was some Decepticon going to shoot me a new tailpipe!"

"We don't do that anymore." That was Scrapper's characteristic rumble. "Thought everyone who came back knew the war was over."

"I know, but old instincts, you know? Plus, I know there are still bots out there with grudges." The familiar but unfamiliar voice was so fast Prowl could barely understand it. "His voice sounds like he's been cleaning his vocalizer with acid rain. He used to sing when he worked on his side of the space bridge. We'd leave our line open so we could talk and he'd get really into it and start singing old folk songs from Praxus."

Finally, Prowl's vision booted all the way back up and a blurry face appeared as his optics struggled to focus after such an abrupt shut down. Bright green optics peered down at him, framed by that chalky pock marked paint job and a silver face a few shades darker than his own. A crest almost as green as the optics adorned the bot's forehead, and the look he was giving Prowl was one of such surprise and love that...

Prowl sat up so fast that he and the stranger slammed heads, the sound like an enormous bell in the now hushed construction site. Bonecrusher roared with laughter as several other bots that Prowl could not name chuckled along with him, and even the typically stoic Scrapper cracked a smile as both bots on the ground fell tangled into a heap before smacking the guffawing Constructicon. "You two okay? Was a pretty bad collision."

"Physically? I'm not feeling great. I'll get over it." Struggling into a sitting position, Prowl grabbed at the blue bot's shoulders, pulling him upright so he could get a look at him. Nicks and scrapes pockmarked his faceplate, one so bad it exposed the wiring underneath his left optic and interrupted smooth curve of his cheek. A thin stream of energon ran from the bot's mouth, but Prowl wiped it away with a gentle thumb, glad to see it was just from a busted lip. 

"Prowl, I thought you were dead." Bluestreak grabbed the hand cradling his face and pressed his mouth into the palm, engine kicking into a coughing splutter of a purr that sounded much more battered than Prowl remembered. "The last time I heard from you was...was the spacebridge shutdown."

"You thought I was dead?" His voice hitched a bit higher than he meant it too, and he could feel the sting of tears at the edge of his optics. Damn lens cleaner. "The last time I talked to you, I thought you were about to be eaten alive by a deadly plague. Law and logic said..."

Blue's laugh was so delightfully earnest it made Prowl's spark sing mourning songs for those who would never be able to hear it, for surely that would be a fate worse than death. The taller bot slid his hands up onto Prowl's face, then around his shoulders so they folded into a hug. "I guess we Cybertronians've been leaving those two for fools for ages. One of the docs on my end cobbled together a vaccine of sorts." He grimaced, drawing back so that his pockmarked paint job was visible. "Didn't get out unscathed...but I'm not dead. It's usually not this bad either, I've just been planet hopping trying to get home and haven't been taking my meds regularly. Doesn't really hurt unless it rains."

"Oh, Blue..." The flaky edges of the peeling paint were rough and dry under Prowl's fingers, and he could see Bluestreak flinch when he accidentally pressed too hard. "I wish you had come through the gate. I wish I'd found you sooner."

Leaning forward, the engineer tapped his forehead against Prowl's, and their crests fit together in that silly way that only happened in sappy unrealistic pre-war romance vids. "We did what we did 'cause we had to. I helped save people, you know. Helped get the vaccine out there quicker since I'm the fastest thing on four wheels. Both speed and smarts wise." His grin was playful when he pulled his head back. "I built a groundbridge out of a couple of energon canisters and some spare wire, you know. You HAVE to hear how I did it."

Behind the two sprawling bots, the alarm for the end of the break ended, and Prowl winced when he heard the crunch that silenced it. Third timer they'd gone through. He went to stand up to direct everyone back to stations - he still had a job to do - but Scrapper laid hand on the top of his head and gently pushed him back into Blue's open arms. "Alright, slag-abouts! We got enough soap opera time for one day, the rest of you pick your nuts and bolts up off the ground and get to work." The Constructicon leader's voice was quiet when he directed it back at the two on the ground. "Y'all take your time. It won't kill us if we don't got an acquisitioner to complain at for a couple hours."

Blue cut over Prowl's quiet protest with a thankful nod and a pair of battered hands tucking into his well maintained fingers. Scrapper only hummed in reply, then trudged off, shouting directions at both his Constructicons and unaligned bots alike in his usual gruff manner.

"You can let yourself rest, you know." The chonolinguistics on his wrists made Prowl jump, and he looked back into Blue's face in surprise. Blue smiled in response, idling his engine once more into a hushed purr that rattled with an irregular beat in both their frames. "I thought I was supposed to be the high strung one. Usually you'd be carrying me to bed, not the other way around."

Venting in amusement, Prowl tapped out a response across the intricate relays that marked his companion's hands, re-familiarizing with the delicate curves and valleys in the metal. Both of them had worked as engineer's of course, but Blue had been forged with hands nearly as sensitive as a medic and a brain to match, and it gave him a certain edge in some technical areas that Prowl lacked. "You ARE high strung. That's okay, though. You learned handspeak; it's a good skill to have. A lot of bots are working with irreparable damage to their communication systems and old Cybertronian standard sign language doesn't always cut it."

That high delighted laugh danced in his ears again, and Bluestreak fluttered his doors in amusement, his handspeak a little shaky as he chuckled. "I didn't learn it for them, Prowl, I picked it up for you. I know how you can't always do the out loud thing."He bumped their crests together again, and this time Prowl reciprocated, nuzzling his face up against the other bot's. "I was learning it when we cut the bridges, you know. Beachcomber was teaching it to me so I could show you when we got together next."

Amusement evident in the staccato beat of his fingers, Prowl tapped back, "Beachcomber? Beachcomber knows chronolinguistics?"

"Apparently it was a popular pre-war way talk to your wind-down dealer."

That got an audible laugh out of him. "Of course it was." Tension finally completely drained from his shoulders, Prowl edged a little farther into Blue's lap so he could gently lay his face in the fraying cables along his neck, though their hands remained linked so they could carry on the conversation. "I missed you. What were you doing at the last working archive on the planet like some kind of scavenging turbofox?"

Blue hummed, letting his cheek rest gently on the side of Prowl's helm. "I've only been planetside for a few days, but I'd heard that there was still a surviving history terminal in Iacon, and I'm not going to lie, I've always wanted to visit the archives here. Figured I'd take a crack at getting into look at all the big secret historical records before security got tight again."

"You tried to access Iaconian triple encrypted archive records because you were curious? Blue, I'm a computer master and it's still taken me weeks to get to where I am with it."

"Well, it's no spacebridge, but I've been around the galaxy a few times since we last talked, seen some weird things." Disentangling himself gently from Prowl's embrace, he stood, pulling the smaller bot to his feet, then linked both their hands in dialogue again. "Why don't we both go take a look at it? Make a date of it."

Prowl shook his head. "Seems like a bit of a dismal date, if you ask me." Shyly though, he stood on tip toe and placed the gentlest of kisses on Blue's cheek, before leaning in to keep their hands clasped tighter as they walked. "After this though I'm taking you to a medic. You look like someone rolled over you and I know it's not just the left over rust plague."

Blue's doors stiffened a bit at the kiss, but a broad smile quickly replaced the tension in his body. "I think I can live with that," he tapped back. "I think I can live with that real easy."


End file.
